Sports wagering is a very popular activity because it increases fan interest and excitement in sports events. With a wager at stake, a fan's interest in the outcome of a sports event is heightened. Also, sports wagering increases a fan's interest in a sport as the fan tracks teams and players in an attempt to place wagers that they believe will be winning. Sports wagering both land-based and internet-based have been established to offers such services and depend on jurisdictional laws.
Sports wagering, however, is not legal in many locations. As a result, other types of activities have been created to increase fan interest and excitement associated with sporting events. As one example, fantasy sports have been created. These activities correlate the performance of players or sets of players involved in actual sports events to a non-wagering entertainment activity.
Skill-based games that allow a player to participate with real money purchases with resulting prizes based on the user's skill have become popular. Such games allow a user to engage in a skill where they compete and play against other users. Examples of such skill-based games include games such as Diamond Strike, poker, and fantasy sports leagues (e.g. baseball, football etc.).
In one implementation of a fantasy football league, a fan forms a fantasy football team comprised of a collection of individual players from a set of different football teams. For example, a fan might pick a quarterback from one football team, a running back from another football team, and so on, in order to create an imaginary or “fantasy” team comprising a collection of players who do not actually form a real team.
Generally, fans pit their fantasy teams against the fantasy teams of other fans usually over the course of professional football season. Commonly, fans pay an entry fee to participate in the fantasy activity and winnings are paid from a pool formed from the entry fees. The winner(s) of the fantasy activity may be determined in a number of fashions. In one common configuration, scores are assigned to each player based upon their performance in an actual game. A fan's fantasy team score then comprises the aggregate of the scores of each of the players on their team. The winner(s) of a particular fantasy activity are the fan(s) whose team(s) achieves the highest score. Winners may be paid at the end of each week of play or at the end of the season.
While fantasy sports activities are popular, there are several reasons why the popularity of such activities is limited. The primary drawback to participating in such fantasy sports activities is the time, effort and understanding of creating teams or selecting players involved in forming and managing a fantasy team. For example, a group of fans may form a fantasy sports pool. Initially, the fans draft or pick players to form their teams. The fans may pick players one at a time in order, in similar fashion to current actual player drafts. In some cases, fans of the same pool are not permitted to select the same players. Thus, each fan must carefully form a fantasy team by evaluating the best players still available when considering the prior picks of other fans. The process of picking the teams may take hours or days and involve spending large amounts of time evaluating available players to be picked. For example, a fan may spend a significant amount of time analyzing statistics, predicted performances, and many other factors for each potential player the fan might wish to draft. The fan might also take into account past performance of each player, the current health status of each player, and so on, to make draft selections.
When the fantasy activity spans multiple games, such as an entire season, a fan may adjust their fantasy player roster to address issues such as injury to the actual players, team matchups and other factors that may affect a player's performance. There are different variations of these types of fantasy team-type activities, each having their own rules. However, in general, participation in these activities is time consuming, often deterring fans from participating in the activities.
Other drawbacks may keep fans from participating in these activities. For example, with traditional fantasy sports activities, a fan must be ready to participate before a season of a particular sport begins, or else the fan risks being left out and must wait until the next season. Further, it may be difficult for a fan to join multiple leagues or to buy multiple entries from the same provider. Traditional fantasy sports may be difficult for a fan to play casually or a quickly as a fan might desire. Finally, from the perspective of an operator, it may be difficult to attract casual sports fans with traditional fantasy sports.
It is thus desirable to develop a new fantasy-sports type activity that overcomes the limitations of existing activities as previously described.